Heretofore, unmanned carts for a golf course are of, a rail road type in which rails are laid on the ground and a cart travels thereon, and a magnetic force guiding type in which magnetic elements are buried under a ground surface of a fairway to form a marker line and the cart runs by sensing the magnetic force on a paved road corresponding to the marker line. The rails are, however, exposed on the fairway in the rail road type, and the paved road is exposed on the fairway in the magnetic force guiding type of the. These systems result in obstructions in playing golf, and undesirable problems arise in the play.
On the other hand, if the magnetic force guiding type is improved to form the marker line under the ground surface, the obstruction in the play is eliminated, but the lawn surface is damaged along the route for the cart running.
In view of the above stated problems, the inventors have devised a method, a so-called "random traveling type", of guiding travel of the cart, while turning steering angles thereof in a predetermined area. In particular, they have proposed as one example the golf cart guiding methods in Japanese Patent Laid Open Nos. 118704/90 and 6884/93 in which the cart guides are buried under the ground surface of the fairway to form the marker line, so that the cart advances along the marker line, while turning the steering angles thereof, according to the random traveling methods including the above mentioned applications.
The random running of the cart on the fairway is significant for the above stated reasons, but in other places, for example, the running on a connection way to a next hole does not require the random running of the cart. Rather the cart should be rapidly moved for the next players, and so the running on a predetermined route in the shortest distance is desirable. Therefore, when the above stated random guiding method is applied to an actual golf course, in general, until the cart enters the hole, it runs on the predetermined route, such as the paved road, and when going into the hole, the cart is steered in the random type.
However, when starting the random running, if the starting point is the same as to each of the carts, the carts might pass, or repeat, the same route, insofar as the steering angles of the carts are not changed, and there arises a problem that the lawn is damaged thereby.
Even though the steering angles of the carts are changed, if the carts run on the same route in a certain range from said starting points, there also arises a problem that the lawn in said range is damaged.
By contrast, when starting the random running, if each of the carts is manually pushed to slightly deviate the starting point or the steering angle, the running on the same route can be avoided, but this is complicated, because the cart is manually pushed at each time of starting the cart.
The present invention has been realized in view of the above said problems, and is to provide a method of guiding to travel the golf cart in which each of the carts is automatically steered not to pass the same route, particularly paying attentions to the starting points of the random running.